Latte Fatale
by HaiJu
Summary: Lancer goes out for coffee with a former co-worker... a very attractive, successful and intelligent woman by the name of Penelope Spectra. Is this just a friendly chat? Or does she want something more?


Lancer adjusted his tie and leaned back in his seat, trying not to think about how the polo he wore bunched uncomfortable and unflattering around his sagging waistline. This was his first date in... well, a long time, and he didn't want to waste it in pointless self-consciousness.

The back of the little coffee shop was dimly lit, cozy and inviting. The woman perched on the chair opposite him stood out in striking contrast to the soft environment, bright, vivacious, self-assured. He had always admired that about her, the ability to seem simultaneously alert and perfectly at ease anywhere she went.

"I was a little surprised to get a call from you," Lancer said with his most charming smile. "You left your position so suddenly, despite the great success of that last performance."

She took a delicate sip of her mocha cappuccino and set it on the table, running her manicured fingernail around the rim. "You know how it is, Mr. Lancer, duty calls. I can't rest on my laurels when other schools need my special touch."

"I understand perfectly what you mean. And please, call me Edward."

"Of course, Edward." He was awarded with a dazzling smile. "But then you'll have to call me Penelope."

"Did you study English?"

"English, with a double minor in science and dance," he responded.

"How unusual. I would have taken you for someone who favored the theater."

"Only as an appreciative audience member, Ms-that is, Penelope. I don't have the projection to do a stage performance justice."

"Yet you do perfectly well as a teacher. You have a fine voice."

"Yes, well. Practice does improve our faults."

"I am a great lover of literature, Edward. Though you can imagine considering my vocation, my reading trends toward the philosophers. Kant, Nietzsche...Freud if I need some entertainment." Her laugh tinkled like glass breaking.

"Truth is stranger than fiction, they say."

"Mmm yes, because fiction is required to make sense," she finished the quote. "Mark Twain, was it?"

"Common misconception. It was Lord Byron who said it first, and a century earlier."

"There's nothing new under the sun." She pointed the long ice cream spoon at him in triumph. "Solomon."

"Ecclesiastes, and yes, that text was attributed to King Solomon. It's funny he would say that, when he had everything the world could offer."

"He grew old," she said, voice dropping low and meditative. "Age has a way of making even the shiniest things tarnish."

Lancer nodded. "Unless you're Midas, and have the magic touch."

"Ah, but that was the lesson in the story; Midas destroyed everything even as he made it valuable. His own daughter was turned to nothing but a pillar of gold. Gold is dead, and there's nothing pretty about that. I'd rather follow Ponce de León."

"The fountain of youth? Someone as beautiful as you wouldn't need that kind of frivolity."

"You do know how to flatter a girl, Edward." Her emerald eyes flicked in the direction of the store entrance. "It's getting dark, I should be heading back to my hotel. Would you like to take me there? It's not far, just a walk through the park." The way she said park, soft, expertly colored lips quirking up just a bit at the corners, sent a little thrill up his spine.

He pushed back his chair, brushing the crumbs and wrinkles out of his shirt and picking up his coat. "Nothing would make me happier."

As they strolled along, Penelope chattered about the parks she'd seen in her travels, how Amity Park's was a particularly nice one, whether Lancer came here often.

As the buildings petered out, so did the conversation, lulling into an amiable silence. It was just past twilight, and the street lights were blinking on, casting a warm yellow glow into the green shadows of the park. It was nearly deserted, except for an occasional dog walker. The weather had turned, leaving it too chilly for most couples.

When Lancer asked her if she was cold, Penelope just smiled. "Why don't you put your arm around me?"

"Well, I, I could, I suppose, I-" Lancer tripped over his own feet and had to throw out his arms for balance. She laughed, and caught his arm, slipping it over her shoulder and tucking herself in near his body. He let his arm drape over her slim shoulders. She kept hold of his hand, carelessly. Her hand felt like ice-or marble, rather, perfectly sculpted, as if some zealous eye had worked out every detail.

He hoped his smile wasn't as foolish as it felt.

They walked on. The sun vanished behind distant buildings, leaving the evening a soft, cool grey, dotted by yellow pools where the streetlights illuminated the sidewalk. Crickets sang in the grass. A few stars outshone the city glare, dotting the velvet sky above.

They strolled in what, Lancer thought, was a very companionable silence. Penelope stopped. She let his hand drop and tipped her head to one side, studying him with the tiniest of smiles playing one her lips. She glanced left, then right; Lancer followed her gaze. There was no one else on this secluded loop of trail. They were alone.

"Penelope… Ms. Spectra," Lancer faltered, tugging at the tie which seemed to hug too tightly against his adam's apple. "While this evening has been pleasant, I would...it would probably be best that…"

Ms. Spectra tsked, shaking her head. "You're too much of a gentleman, Edward."

Her gaze had changed, somehow. The glittering emeralds framed by dark lashes were no longer warm. They had the intensity of a tiger's.

Lancer resisted the completely irrational urge to back away. His heart thudded in his chest, but he could not completely convince himself that it was because of the close proximity of a beautiful woman as they stood, alone, behind a screen of trees, in a quiet corner of the park.

Scalding lips brushed his neck. "Do you know why I brought you here?"

"I—I—" Lancer flushed scarlet. He wanted to melt right into the ground, but he couldn't seem to pull away. It was as if the shadows of the park had locked around him, constricting his arms and pinning them to his sides.

"To _use _you." Lancer jerked in surprise.

Penelope stepped back, surveying him with lazy green eyes. Then she threw back her head and laughed. Perfect white teeth flashed. "You poor, fat, desperate little man. I can't decide what's more hilarious; that you actually believed that I was interested, or that you ever imagined that someone like me would kiss a hairy, shapeless, poverty-stricken lump like you."

The ground reeled under Lancer's feet. Embarrassment, confusion and anger swirled around him in a dark cloud. "I don't understand what you're doing, Penelope," he choked out. "Why lead me on?"

She chuckled, musical and cruel. "Because. You're easy prey."

He sank to his knees. Pain pressed on his chest; his breath came short and fast. Was he having a heart attack? Penelope watched him without a flicker of surprise. Had she… done this to him? She hadn't touched him. Unless there had been something in his drink…

The woman's hand dropped on his shoulder, tightening with inhuman strength, nails biting through his shirt and digging into his shoulderblade.

"I have to thank you, my dear," she purred, leaning in close so that their lips almost touched. She seemed infinitely more beautiful now, radiating health and youth from every pore. "I would have been lost without you. Now look at me." Penelope smiled. "Who knew that you'd have that much vigor buried under all that flab. With this, I can-"

She cut off with an odd, strangled squawk.

Green claws sprouted out of Penelope's chest. She shrieked, her hands flying off Lancer's shoulders to grasp at the glittering green blades. Lancer gasped in a breath of air, like he'd been underwater and had suddenly broken the surface.

"I'm done playing hide and go creep," an echoing, teenaged voice said. Danny Phantom appeared over Penelope's shoulder, his eyes green with ghostly fury.

Penelope's flawless face twisted with rage. "Not you!"

"Yeah, me. Haven't you noticed? You're out past curfew!"

The claws pulled. Penelope's skin stretched horribly, then tore asunder. Lancer flinched, throwing up his hands. Instead of a fountain of gore, it exposed inky blackness.

The skin that had been Penelope Spectra fluttered in tatters to the sidewalk, leaving a dark silhouette standing-or rather, hovering- in its stead. Scarlet eyes glimmered out of a shadowy face. Fangs parted in a furious howl. It twisted, claws outstretched, slashing at the ghost boy. He darted back, tossing aside a heavy pair of gloves-Lancer could see now that this was the source of the claws-and reached for a silver cylinder clipped to his belt.

His eyes flicked to Lancer, widened, darted back to the thing that had been Penelope Spectra.

"You think you can catch me now, freak?" she hissed. "I'm stronger now."

Phantom's eyes narrowed. "Actually, yeah I can. You might have gotten a little more powerful, but I wasn't just kicking my heels while you were gone, either."

Another voice chimed in, this from time behind Lancer. "I've been practicing."

He looked up and to his surprise found a second Phantom hovering just above him.

The dark ghost twisted around, claws raised, but a bright green beam hit her squarely in the chest. She shrieked. Then bright blue rings punctured her from behind and sucked every last trace of darkness away, inside the device Phantom had taken from his belt. He capped the silver cylinder and re-clipped it to his belt.

The second Phantom drifted over to his double, high-fived, then melted away into vapor and drifted inside the ghost's chest. Phantom shook his head, going cross-eyed for a moment. "Ugh, still feels weird." A cold hand grabbed Lancer's and pulled him to his feet. "You okay?"

"_Maltese Falcon! _She was... she was..." Lancer sat down heavily on the park bench. She was a ghost? Penelope... Miss Spectra, a ghost?

"I caught her pet assistant this morning. Managed to get a couple of hits on her, but she slipped away. Must've been trying to get her strength back. I guess…" He hesitated, looking at Lancer. "I guess she was looking for an easy target."

Easy target. The words echoed what Penelope had told him just moments before. That was him. Desperate. Alone. Not worth a real woman's attention.

"Uh, Mr. Lancer? You okay?"

"She tricked me," he said at last. Self-loathing and disbelief trickled into his tone.

"Yeah, she does that," Phantom muttered darkly. "That's where she gets her power and good looks, you know. Making people miserable. Sucking the life out of them. It keeps her young and human-looking."

"Oh," was all Lancer could find to say.

The ghost studied for him a moment, then to Lancer's surprise, sighed and dropped onto the park bench just inches away from the teacher. A chill ran up Lancer's bare arm. Phantom rummaged in his backpack and pulled out a chocolate bar, offering it to Lancer.

"It helps," he said simply. "Coffee, too. And a hot shower."

Lancer tried to process this, blinking at the ghost boy's brown backpack. It seemed oddly familiar. "Do ghosts shower?"

"Only when they have to," he returned with a grin.

An evasive answer, but Lancer decided he was too tired to try to puzzle out all the implications at the moment. He accepted the bar and looked down at it with a heavy sigh. "Now all I need is a cat, and my pathetic old bachelor lifestyle will be complete."

"Hey, uh, it's not all that bad, you know?" An icy hand patted his shoulder awkwardly.

Lancer could have laughed at the absurdity of it all, if it hadn't felt so humiliating.

"She got me too, at first," Phantom said.

Lancer's eyebrows shot up. Phantom looked fourteen, maybe fifteen. Younger than a lot of his own students. "You mean she—"

"Well, ah, no," Phantom waved his arms with an awkward grin. "Not like *that*, you know, ew, she's like twenty years older than me. She just... told me things. About myself, and my friends. Fed me lies that sounded way too accurate. She said I was a loser, a freak. I didn't belong anywhere. That nothing I did would ever make people in this town think otherwise."

Lancer eyed his strange companion; the ghost gripped the thermos in his hand, glaring at the display blinking _OCCUPIED_. The bowed shoulders and troubled expression made Lancer wonder if Phantom wasn't still half convinced. "And you believed her."

"At first, yeah. I was lucky enough to have friends that set me straight." He shook his head and shoved the thermos roughly into his bag. "Spectra's good at that. Really, really good. She finds whatever it is you worry about, whatever it is you're scared of in yourself, and she rips it wide open. Makes you feel like there's nothing else left."

"But she's wrong," Lancer objected.

He glanced up with a small smile. "Yeah, she is."

Lancer found himself smiling back.

Phantom stood up and stretched, extending his fingers with a series of pops. He felt so bizarrely real and present for a ghost, Lancer thought; if it wasn't for the eerie glow that lit up the growing twilight and the way his feet brushed only the tips of the grass, Phantom could have been any other teenager at the end of a long day. The ghost trotted across the sidewalk and scooped up the gloves, depositing them in his bag with the thermos.

"Look." He turned to face Lancer, clear-eyed and determined. "I don't know exactly what she said to you, but I can tell you that she never sees the whole picture. She doesn't know you. She can't, because she's just empty inside. You saw it-nothing but darkness. All she really has is greed, selfishness, and a weird thing for soy lattes."

"Cappuccinos, actually." Laner leaned back, let out a gusty sigh, and bit off a chunk of chocolate. He chewed thoughtfully, appreciating the bittersweet flavor of the candy. The ghost

boy was right; the cloud had lifted a little. "I should have known not to trust a woman who couldn't appreciate the more refined beverage."

"Heh, you would be a tea drinker."

"It's the drink of sages and philosophers, so I'm in good company."

Phantom gave him a knowing grin. "Except for finals week. That's all coffee."

"How did you-"

"Hey, somebody has to keep the lunch lady out of the teacher's lounge. Plus I'd always wondered what you guys did in there."

"Do you... haunt the school?"

"More like it haunts _me_," he muttered. Suddenly he brightened. "Actually hey, since I just, you know, saved your life and all, can you do me a favor? Go easy on your fourth period Lit class, okay?"

Fourth period. Suddenly Lancer knew exactly where he'd seen that backpack before. It belonged-or had once belonged-to Tucker Foley.

"This wouldn't have anything to do with those friends you mentioned, would it?"

"That's not, um…" Phantom's eyes flicked around desperately. They fell on Lancer's watch and he sprang up. "Crap, gotta go! Uh, important ghost hero duties to attend to. Anyway, just think about it, okay? Bye!"

The ghost boy took off in a streak of black and silver, up through the trees and out of sight. Lancer stared after him for a long moment. He slowly, thoughtfully finished his chocolate bar. Like most people in Amity Park, he held a general distrust of ghosts. Especially since Casper High had proven to be a supernatural hot spot. Still, there was something… different about that ghost boy. He reminded Lancer of one of his students more than a supernatural creature.

He'd been meaning to hold a pop quiz tomorrow in fourth period. Maybe it could wait until Monday.

Lancer strolled off, whistling.

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><p><em>~ end ~<em>

* * *

><p>AN:

A short little fic inspired by the Spectra prompt for Phanniemay earlier this year. It just takes me five months to actually finish these things... I hope you enjoyed it!

-Hj


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